1.
For example, the beginning of the entry for ‘anaphora’ in
the MacMillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Supplement) reads “The
study of anaphora (from Greek, "carry back") is the study of
the ways in which occurrences of certain expressions, particularly
pronouns, depend for their interpretations upon the interpretations of
occurrences of other expressions.” And in The Concise Oxford
Dictionary of Linguistics, by Peter Matthews, 1997, Oxford
University Press, New York, the entry for ‘anaphora’ begins
“The relation between a pronoun and another element, in the same
or in an earlier sentence, that supplies its referent.”

2.
That is, ‘It is possible that’ tells us to choose a
possible world, and ‘some human’ then ranges over the
humans in that world.

3.
One difference though is that the quantifiers of standard first order
logic are unrestricted, whereas natural language quantifiers like
‘every man’ are restricted (here by the nominal
‘man’). Still, it is easy enough to introduce a first
order language with restricted quantifiers that bind variables. The
pronouns in sentences like (3) and (6) function just like the bound
variables of such a language.

5.
Sometimes philosophers and linguists consider conjunctions of
sentences like those in (7) and (8) rather than considering the two
sentence discourses. For example, Evans [1977] considers conjunctions
such as ‘Few MPs came to the party but they had a marvelous
time.’ The reasons for thinking the pronouns in the second
conjuncts of such conjunctions are not bound variables or referring
expressions are the same as the reasons for thinking this about the
pronouns in the second sentences of (7) and (8). Hence I shall talk
only of discourses like (7) and (8). Also, henceforth I shall take the
intended anaphoric relations in my examples to be obvious (as they
are); and unless otherwise indicated I am only considering the
readings of my examples on which the intended anaphoric relations
obtain.

6.
Evans argued that a bound variable treatment also gets the truth
conditions wrong for cases such as ‘John owns some sheep and
Harry vaccinates them’ (as well as for the two sentence
discourse corresponding to this conjunction). Wilson [1984] argues,
correctly in my view, that Evans is mistaken about this. But that the
account of pronouns with quantifier antecedents in other sentences (or
conjunctions) as bound variables gets the truth conditions wrong for
some cases (e.g., (8)) is enough to reject it.

7.
Of course, one could argue that different quantifiers have different
capacities for how far their scopes extend, and that this explains the
discrepancy between (7) and (8), and (9) and (10). So far as I know,
no one has defended this view, and I think they are right not to.

8.
I believe that considerations of this general sort were first raised
in Davies [1981] (p. 172-173). They are also discussed in Wilson
[1984] and Soames [1989].

9.
So far as I know, such sentences were introduced into the
contemporary literature in Geach [1962]. The term ‘donkey
anaphora’ arose from the fact that Geach used the indefinite
‘a donkey’ in his examples, as I do above.

10.
The name is due to Kamp. Heim [1982] calls one formulation of her
view file change semantics and that term is sometimes used in
the literature for Heim's version of DRT.

12.
The various hedges above (scare quotes around ‘logical
form’), here (‘in effect can be represented as’) and
below are due to the fact that Heim and Kamp implement the feature of
DRT being described in different ways. For example, in the present
case Heim (on one formulation) assigns logical forms to sentences and
in these logical forms indefinites always have novel indices. Pronouns
anaphoric on an indefinite share its index. Indices on indefinites
and indexed pronouns function as variables. By contrast, Kamp
constructs discourse representation structures for discourses, and
truth is defined over these. An indefinite introduces a new discourse
referent into the discourse representation structure for the discourse
it is in. And a pronoun anaphoric on the indefinite gets linked with
the discourse referent the indefinite introduced. But Heim’s and
Kamp’s methods are both ways of insuring that the truth of a
discourse like (15) requires that some one thing satisfy both the
predicative material in the indefinite and the sentence containing it,
and the predicative material the anaphoric pronoun is combined
with.

13.
Actually, the claim that the truth of (14) requires every donkey
owning woman to beat every donkey she owns is somewhat
controversial. This is discussed below.

14.
I assume that ‘every x,y
(Φ(x,y)) (Ψ(x,y))’,
where ‘Φ(x,y)’ and
’Ψ(x,y)’ are (possibly) complex
predicates that may contain free occurrences of
‘x’ and ‘y’, is true just in
case every assignment to ‘x’ and
‘y’ that makes
‘Φ(x,y)’ true also makes
’Ψ(x,y)’ true.

21.
In particular, Davies [1981] holds that pronouns anaphoric on
singular indefinite noun phrases (‘Mary owns a
dog. It…’) “go proxy” for definite
descriptions (pps. 166-176). He holds a broadly Russellian theory of
definite descriptions, and views them as quantificational
(p. 151-152). He suggests that in relative clause donkey sentences,
anaphoric pronouns “go proxy” for number neutral
descriptions (which Neale calls numberless), and so explains
why ‘Every man who owns a donkey beats it.’ (allegedly)
requires every man who owns donkeys to beat all the donkeys he owns in
the same way Neale does (see p. 175). And finally, the options Davies
considers regarding how to understand the notion that anaphoric
pronouns “go proxy for” or “are interpreted
as” definite descriptions (p. 174) appear to be precisely those
considered by Neale (p. 184).

22.
Actually, Neale mentions another factor as well. Concerning the
sentence ‘Every man who has a daughter thinks she is the most
beautiful girl in the world’ Neale writes: “…it is
arguable that a singular [Russellian] interpretation of the pronoun is
preferred. A reasonable explanation is that immediate linguistic
context, and lexical and background knowledge, conspire to defeat the
numberless interpretation. (In the normal run of things, there cannot
be two most beautiful girls in the world.)” (p. 238) I
suppress this factor affecting which reading an anaphoric pronoun
has. For in the examples I consider in which an anaphoric pronoun
lacks a numberless reading there are no factors such as the
impossibility of there being two most beautiful girls in the world
that would “defeat” the numberless reading.

23.
Note that nothing like the impossibility of there being two most
beautiful girls in the world is present in this case to defeat the
numberless reading. Sarah could beat more than one donkey and the
Camaro driver could use more than one eight track player. See previous
note.

24.
Of course, DRT and CDQ give different accounts of what these factors
are and how they interact.

25.
For example, Montague (more or less) assigned each syntactic
constituent a model theoretic interpretation and the interpretation of
a syntactically complex expression was a function of the
interpretations of its parts. DRT, by contrast, doesn't even assign
interpretations to parts of sentences.

26.
Groenendijk and Stokhof write the clause as follows:
||∃xφ||= {<g,h>|
∃k: k[x]g &
,<k,h> ε ||φ||}, (where
k[x]g is a sequence that differs from
g at most on x.

28.
That we only look at pairs <h,h> means that
conditionals are “externally static”, and so cannot affect
the interpretation of expressions outside of them, unlike
conjunctions. This explains the following contrast: ‘A man came
in and he was happy. He was rich.’; *‘If a man came in, he
was happy. He was rich.’

29.
But not outside: it is externally static, which explains the
infelicity of the following: *“Every woman who ones a donkey
beats it. It is in pain.”

31.
Chierchia [1995] favors a dynamic approach, but allows that anaphoric
pronouns can function as definite descriptions as well (see
pps. 110-122, and Section 3.3 above). He also suggests that Geach
Discourses (see above) can be handled assuming the anaphoric pronouns
in them are functioning as definite descriptions. So perhaps he would
invoke this mechanism to get the reading discussed above for the
second sentence of 11. But this is to invoke another mechanism in
addition to the one invoked by dynamic approaches to explain the
anaphora in 11 on the reading in question. And that is the point I am
making in the text.

32.
I shall also talk of the (alleged) universal and existential
readings of sentences like 14. These are just the readings
corresponding to the (alleged) universal and existential truth
conditions, respectively.

33.
Kanazawa [1994] discusses how the monotonicity properties of the
determiner on the wide scope quantifier in a relative clause donkey
sentence (‘Every’, ‘Most’ and ‘No’
in 30 a-c respectively) affect whether a universal or existential
reading for the sentence is favored. Though Kanazawa admits that
other factors also contribute to making one or the other reading
favored in particular cases (see p. 124), he claims that certain
monotonicity properties of the determiners on the wide scope
quantifier result in only one reading being possible. Thus he claims
that when the wide scope quantifier has a determiner that is upward
monotone on both arguments (e.g., ‘some’), only the
existential reading (which Kanazawa calls the “weak
reading”) is possible (p. 120, 124). I agree with this. However,
Kanazawa also claims that when the wide scope quantifier has a
determiner that is monotone down on both arguments (e.g.,
‘no’) only the existential (weak) reading is possible (p.
120, 124). Though such sentences favor existential readings, sentences
like 31 c cast doubt on the claim that they only allow existential
readings. In any case, the important point is that though Kanazawa is
concerned with how monotonicity properties of the determiners on the
wide scope quantifiers in relative clause donkey sentences affect
which readings are favored or available, he agrees that in the general
case factors other than such monotonicity properties affect which
readings are favored. See also Guerts [2002] for interesting data on
factors affecting which readings are favored for donkey sentences.

34.
For example, Kanazawa [1994b] captures the universal and existential
readings by defining a strong and a weak dynamic generalized
quantifier for each determiner (see p. 138). This appears to amount to
claiming that determiners are ambiguous. However, Kanazawa appears to
take himself to be simply “modeling” the readings of
donkey sentences and not actually proposing a semantics. Thus, in
introducing his dynamic predicate logic with generalized quantifiers,
he consistently talks of using the framework to “model” or
“represent readings of” donkey sentences (see p. 132, 137,
138, 139); and after discussing the framework, he writes: “So
far, we have not proposed any concrete model of the mechanism that
assigns interpretations to donkey sentences. Although it would not be
difficult to extract a compositional semantics from my treatment of
donkey sentences in dynamic predicate logic with generalized
quantifiers, our interest in this paper is not in finding the right
set of compositional semantic rules that give donkey sentences the
interpretation that they actually have (in the default case).”
(p. 150). But the point is that if one were to turn Kanazawa's
approach into a semantics, it seems that it would posit an ambiguity
in determiners. Kanazawa himself seems to recognize this when, in
discussing Chierchia’s approach and contrasting it with his own,
he writes “So he [Chierchia] shifts the locus of ambiguity from
the determiner to the pronoun” (p. 155). On the other hand, as
Kanazawa’s remarks just suggested, Chierchia [1995] attempts to
capture the universal and existential readings by positing an
ambiguity in the pronouns in donkey sentences. Chierchia holds that
such pronouns are interpreted either as dynamically bound variables or
E type (descriptive) pronouns (see p. 110-122). Chierchia denies that
the (alleged) fact that donkey pronouns can be interpreted in these
two ways amounts to postulating an ambiguity in these pronouns (see
p. 117). However, I don't find what he says on this matter
persuasive.

35.
As does the question of whether conditional donkey sentences seem to
manifest both universal and existential readings.

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